Running a self-financed business is tough. On days when you’re not fretting the ratio of billable vs. non-billable hours you’re frantically balancing the books and hoping that you post more P (profit) than L (loss).
Chances are, you are probably somewhat like me — too busy to run your business to sweat the small stuff and worry about every little detail. Unfortunately, those details keep people like you and me up late at night. The “small stuff” can create pretty major dents in our time and energy if we don’t manage it properly from the get-go, so I’ve taken the liberty to compile a short list of apps that make my life easier in an effort to help you!
- Meeting management – Tungle: Sign up for a free account at http://tungle.me and kiss your scheduling hassles goodbye. Tungle allows you to import multiple calendars and coordinate meetings with clients or employees based around YOUR availability. Instead of email pingpong, Tungle allows you to give windows of availability for your attendee to choose from. Once they’ve confirmed a mutually convenient time, Tungle magically inserts it into your calendar and sends you an email reminder the morning before the meeting. I’ve used it for the past three months and it’s an absolute time saver! This is FREE ($4.99 for premium-level services).
- Small business accounting - Outright.com: This is a great accounting web app that synchronizes all of your business accounts. If you’re like me and collect payments through both PayPal and traditional paper checks, this helps streamline your P&L statements and cranks out monthly summaries. Unfortunately they’ve discontinued 1099 filing but they still help you estimate your tax payments and cover your other basic accounting needs. You can also categorize your expenses and income so that you can tell (at a glance) who your best customers are and what’s draining your wallet fastest. This is FREE for 30 days and $9.95 a month thereafter.
- Reputation and brand management – Google Alerts: Keep track of industry buzz, your brand mentions, or what people saying about you online. Google Alerts allows you to set up email alerts each time your predetermined search query shows up online. This is great for monitoring mentions of your company name or key phrases in your industry, but what’s even better is that you can track your competitors, market, and industry trends beneath the radar. (Remember, most sites have analytics software set up, so if you’re cruising your competitor’s website or blog often, they can tell!)
- Social media management – SocialOomph: This has been a godsend for my business. For less than $30 a month (probably less than an hour’s worth of billable work for you) this amazing web app can pre-schedule all of your Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Buzz, and Blogger/Wordpress updates from one interface. There are tons of analytics/reporting features, strategic community building features, as well as general task automation. Instead of slaving away at your social media presence daily, spend an hour a week scheduling your updates…then you can spend a half hour, a few times a week, engaging with your community instead of fretting about what you’ll tweet next. Similar to Google Alerts, you can receive a daily digest of @replies or mentions, as well as a report of “best-fit” followers for you to add on Twitter. FREE accounts available but I highly recommend their premium services.
- Website and content management – WordPress: One of the web’s most powerful content management platforms, WordPress-driven sites account for about 15% of sites that are online at any given moment. Although initially released as a blogging platform, it has been developed into an easy-to-use website management tool for businesses large and small. You can set up a free site at http://wordpress.com, but I highly recommend you find a website design/development team (like us) to set one up on your own domain and to optimize it for your business needs. The application is FREE, but (some of) the plugins and (all of the) hired hands will cost you.
These are MY top 5 business apps. What apps can’t you live without?
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